Judge: Ivey, pal broke gaming rules in $10M win
Ivey has won nine World Series of Poker bracelets. Lawyers for him and the casino did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Borgata claimed the pair exploited a defect in cards that enabled them to sort and arrange good cards. The casino says the technique, called edge sorting, violates state casino gambling regulations. But Ivey asserts his win was simply the result of skill and good observation.
Borgata claims the cards used in the games were defective in that the pattern on the back was not uniform. The cards have rows of small white circles designed to look like the tops of cut diamonds, but Borgata says some were only half-diamonds or quarters. Ivey has said he simply noticed things that anyone playing the game could have observed and bet accordingly.
The judge noted that Ivey and companion player Cheng Yin Sun instructed dealers to arrange the cards in a certain way, which is permitted under the rules of the game, after Sun noticed minute differences in them. But Hillman ruled those actions did violate state Casino Control Act and their contractual obligation to abide by it in gambling at the casino.
Ivey and Sun, the judge wrote, “view their actions to be akin to cunning, but not rule-breaking, maneuvers performed in many games, such as a play-action pass in American football, or the ‘Marshall swindle’ in chess.”
She said “Sun’s mental acumen” in distinguishing the tiny differences in the patterns on the back of the cards was “remarkable.”
“But even though Ivey and Sun’s cunning and skill did not break the rules of baccarat,” the judge wrote, “what sets Ivey and Sun’s actions apart from deceitful maneuvers in other games is that those maneuvers broke the rules of gambling as defined in this state.”